
Qass. 
Book. 



;,:///■ / (/■ . 




■* -t 


REY. MR. BINGHAM'S DISCOURSE 

OV THE 


^^SH^^inatioii of f r^^itlent Sincolit, 


« 




Rational gisapointmciit. 



DISCOURSE 



OCCASIONED BY THE 



ASSASSINATION OF PIIESIDENT LINCOLN 



UELIVEUED IN WESTMINSTER CHURCH, BUFFALO, 



SuMMV KvENiNO, May 7tb, 1865. 



BY JOEL F. BINGHAM, 



TASTOK OF THK OONGEKGATION. 



BUFFALO: 
]}REED, BUTLER AND COMPANY. 

1865. 



FRANKLIN PRINTING HOl'SE. 

TIIOMA*, TYPoaBAItllB. 



.^^^^' 



DISCOURSE 



I WILL BRING THE BLIND BY A WAY THAT THEY KNEW NOT. — ISAIAH 
XLII, 16. 



No otlier flict has been more conspicuous 
upon the face of society among us, during the 
progress of the war that is now closing, than 
the constantly spreading and deepening senti- 
ment of our national dependence on the allot- 
ments of the Divine Hand. We have learned, 
with all our fellow-countrymen, during the 
last four years, as we never before understood 
• it, the uncertainty 'of human calculations, and 
the double blindness of human self-sufficiency, 
conceit and independence. Inexorable and 
repeated disappointments have taught us — the 
most careful estimates and the most sanguine 
expectations, now immeasurable cut short, and 
then immeasurably outrun, have taught us, 



Ihuruu-lily at lust. tli:it God, above all earthly 
forces, still directs tlie destinies of this world, 
and, by an inscrutable and irresistil^le Provi- 
dence, WILL HRING BLIND .MEN INTO HIS PUR- 
POSES, {nationally as well as indwidualhj,) by 

A WAV TIIKV KNEW NOT. 

At the outset of the rebellion, we were 
both unwillino- and unable to believe that 
a civil war among us would ever actu- 
ally come, till tlie sudden bombardmcn.t and 
fall of Sumter thrilled, like liMUninrr, throun-h 
the national heart, in the terrible conviction 
that civil war was already begun. So, the 
blind eyes of the people were then opened, 
so far as to see that the incredible crisis was 
upon us, and their heart was so far fired, as 
to rouse them to gird themselves for the 
dreadful strife. But the ma^-nitude of the 
treason which was on foot, and the time and 
force which would be required to crush it 
was not then perceived, and only dawned on 
our (lull vision in the mortilying and over- 
whelming defeat of the national arms at 
Bull Kun. Thus, again, we were strained to 
the sending of those huge armies into the 
field which have swc|)t witli des(.lali(.ii from 



the Potomac to the Gulf, and have destroyed 
at once the status of RebeUion and the status 
of Slavery. Slavery, however, even then, we 
meant not to disturb, and commander after 
commander was removed m disgrace for smit- 
ing it, even as a military blow upon the 
strength of the public enemy. But the 
tedious and unsuccessful campaigns in Virginia, 
the dreadful disasters on the Peninsula, before 
Fredericksburg, in the Valley of the Shenan- 
doah, and especially the alarming irruptions of 
the rebel armies into Pennsylvania and Mary- 
land, threatening the destruction of Washing- 
ton, and even of our great northern cities — 
it was this terrible path of God which 
brought us, in the peril of our existence, to 
lift our hand with the might of despair, and 
sweep utterly from our soil that accursed 
system of wrong under which rebellion was 
born, and by which it was mightily fostered, 
even in its grapple upon the throat of our 
liberties. By such bitter disappointments and 
terrors, were the President and the nation 
nerved up to utter, (with doubt and hesita- 
tion,) the immortal proclamation of January 1, 
1863, by which the heathenish shackles were 



6 

knocked at a l>low I'roiii lour millions of 
wretched Ibllow-ljeings, at whose outrageous 
wrongs humanity had wept for ages, though 
powerless to break the tremendous strength, 
or alleviate the horrors of their iron bondage. 
See then, fellow citizens, in these bitter sur- 
prises, how gloriously God has led us, in our 
blindness, by a way of His own that we 
knew not. 

But tlicsc things are now securely past. 
Wc have been coming, in these preparatory 
remarks, to speak of our recent ' tremendous 
surprise and grief For surely we expected 
no such thing. We have been equally con- 
founded with amazciucnt, and crushed with 
sorrow. We did not dream that the path 
along which God was leading us, already 
actually emerging, as it seemed, forever, from 
the darkness and peril under which we had 
wept for four long years — we did not dream 
that this pathj of Providence, already so 
cheering, and brightening every day with the 
realization of our best hopes, was to tnni 
again into the gloom of that bitter sorrow 
which overspreads the land. That the great 
and rrood man whom wc all (leli":hted to 



honor — that the twice chosen President of the 
now regenerated nation — the President, be- 
yond all question, who Avas beloved with a 
tenderer affection, and a more nearly unanimous 
sentiment among the people, than any other 
who has occupied that seat of power and of 
popular criticism, save, perhaps, the first, the 
unopposed, the uncompared, the solitary Wash- 
ington, who is now henceforth to divide his 
glory with this second object of a nation's 
eternal veneration — a man, too, not only of 
rare and tried wisdom, of an integrity as 
high as heaven above every bribe, and of a 
patriotism burning like the flame of life itself, 
but a man so gentle, so conciliatory and for- 
giving, so unwilling to inflict -^pain even upon 
the guilty — a man of such transparent hon- 
esty, of such child-like simplicity — the very 
embodiment of every kind and sweet and al- 
most womanly virtue of our nature — that 
this man, the embodiment, also, of the supreme 
authority of the nation, God's anointed over 
us — truly, but a few days ago, nothing short 
of an accredited prophecy from the skies 
could have made us believe that this incom- 
parable President, this intensely beloved man, 



tliis n'[)rcscntative ol" our national power and 
our national life — that he would fall a mur- 
dered victim to the Vjloody work of a politi- 
cal assasin. When tlie terrible news first 
sounded in our e:irs wo could not Ijelieve the 
tidings. We can now scarcely credit the tes- 
timony of our senses. But for three live-long 
weeks we have been dwelling in the midst of 
weeds. Every home in the land has been 
draped in mourning. The temples of public 
authority, law and justice, and the sanctuaries 
of religion of every name, from Maine to 
Louisiana, stand robed in Ijlack. We have all 
witnessed and mingled in the funeral cortege, 
magnificent in signs of woe. Many of us have 
gazed with our «cyes upon the blackened ruin, 
fast crumbling back into unrecognizable dust 
— all of the nation's Deliverer and Slavery's 
Destroyer which the murderer's work has left 
to a mourning people. 

Now we have to ask what that nr/r light 
is 'which God has just made to dawn on our 
sloiv nision hy this new and terrilde turn in 
the jiath of If is Providence. The occasion of 
such mighty mourning — a nation bowed, and 
each man for himself ])()wed in the agony of 



9 

a personal bereavement — what has this reveal- 
ed to us which, in our blindness, we were be- 
fore overlooking? What now are the new, or 
at least newly reiterated and re-emphasized 
facts which these blackened heavens are thun- 

H dering in the ears of the nation? 

^ Why, in the first place, what all good men 

have been slow to read, and unwilling to 
read, but are now compelled to read in let- 
ters of blood and fire in the heavens — that 
the animus of this rebellion • — the spirit ivhich 
gave it life^ and ivhich has been its living 
p7-inciple ever since — IS ABSOLUTELY 
HELLISH TO THE LAST DEGREE. For it 
were useless to attempt to shield the cause of 
rebellion, from responsibility for, and compli- 
city with, this last supreme culmination of 
its guilt and murder. It were useless to talk: 
of this deed, which has shocked and disgusted 
the world, as merely the individual guilt of a 
maddened villain. Supposing, for a • moment, 
that, in point of fact, it had been so, (which 
is now officially proven to have been far oth- 
erwise,) yet then, even, what must have been 
the seed, the atmosphere, the culture which 
could germinate and ripen this accursed fruit ! 



No good cause, no laudable spirit, no worthy 
end could inspire a man to such devilisli 
deeds. The cause, its spirit, its end are un- 
mistakably set forth, before heaven and earth, 
in the fiendish champion and his fiendish 
work. 

l]ut the almost incredible truth has been 
made as clear as noonday — tlic unwelcome 
evidence has rolled up in masses of terrible 
light over innumerable enterprises and deeds of 
darkness, till une must be more sightless than 
the blind who does not see, to-day, that the 
nameless act of April 14th was but striking a 
higher and more conspicuous note in the same 
dreadful harmony of hell, which has been 
playing, half-muflled and in the distance, for 
the last four years, the name of which is 
"Revenge and Ptuin." The accomplishment 
of this very deed was but narrowly escaped, at 
Baltimore, four years ago. That attempt was, 
indisputably, in the hands of the leaders of re- 
volt. It was intended to forestall the inevita- 
ble struggle, and render an appeal to arms im- 
possible. Six months ago, when re-election 
was certain, it was coolly advertised for, in 
the newspapers, at a magnificent reward. 



11 

Commencing at Selma, Georgia, (a copy ot 
which I have seen,) the offer was copied 
from paper to paper, till it had spread 
throughout the South ; and at least one prom- 
inent Southern journal, mentioning the project 
with applause, took occasion to urge upon the 
attention of the leaders, at Richmond, that a 
few millions appropriated in this way would 
be certain to secure the fact, and would 
achieve more for the cause, than hundreds of 
millions spent in the regular prosecution of 
civilized warfare. This course, however attrac- 
tive, the leaders dare not openly take. It was 
too perilous, thus to outrage the conscience of 
all civilized mankind. Yet it has now transpired 
that they were privy to a most formidable con- 
spiracy, to prevent, in this same diabolical way, 
the second inauguration on the 4tli of March 
last, which, no thanks to them, miscarried. 

Look, now, for a moment, at the South- 
ern methods of prosecuting their public and 
civilized warfare, so-called, which the late cli- 
max of crime has powerfully illuminated. In 
Virginia, arsenic was thrown into the wells, 
where national armies were likely to pass; and 
the inhabitants of the country, whom these 



iiriiiies had spared in life and property, were 
employed to bring into the national camps 
and sell to these soldiers poisoned pies and 
I'ruit. Sheridan himself, early in the summer 
ol' 18G4, barely escaped with his life from a 
fatal dose received in a similar way. 

Throughout the territory in rebellion, and 
during the whole contest, numberless mur- 
derous gangs have swept to and fro, hunting 
out and chasing down, like wild beasts, every 
man, however unarmed, unoffending and quiet, 
against whom the faintest suspicion whispered 
that he still loved, and, in the bottom of his 
heart, still clung to, the flag and the govern- 
ment of his fjithers. Once caught, these 
" fiiithi'ul among the fliithless found," whose 
only offence was loyalty, were treated with 
every refinement of cruelty and murder. They 
were butchered in the midst of their families. 
They were hung upon trees in front of their 
own door. They were starved to death in the 
forests. They were waylaid and shot from the 
wayside. Their houses were set on fire over 
their heads, and their wives and infant chil- 
dren driven naked into the night and (he 
storm and the wilderness. 



13 

Our children will be compelled to read with 
a shudder of the wholesale massacres of hun- 
dreds aiid thousands of national troops after 
surrender ; of wounded national soldiers, on the 
field of battle and in the power of the enemy, 
purposely left to welter and languish, for days, 
without attendance, or so much as the service 
of a drop of water for their terrible thirst; of 
unnecessary and cruel amputations, by rebel 
surgeons, with the double purpose, openly 
avowed, to punish and disable; of hospitals 
purposely set on fire, with sick and wounded 
national soldiers left, by scores, to roast and 
consume in the burning building ; in short, of 
the fortunes of battle, so terrible at the best, 
savagely aggravated, in a thousand horrible 
ways, by the inhuman and unheard of bar- 
barities which this rebellion has developed. 

Our children and the world will read, too, 
with indescribable detestation, how great and 
peaceful cities, far remote from the armies in 
conflict, were secretly set on fire, by the skulking 
incendiaries of the rebellion ; of the attempted 
destruction of moving railroad trains, filled with 
unarmed men, women and children, by similar 
emissaries from the same quarter ; and of the 



u 

crudest ocean piracies on record, perpetrated 
in ships of foreign make and outfit, under this 
monstrous assumption of illegitimate authority. 

But the blackest page, as it seems to me, 
which the whole history of the past can show 
will *be that on which shall stand the yet un- 
written, yet ungathered and unknown summary 
of the horrors of the rebel i^rzsows, which con- 
fined and slowly destroyed the soldiers captured 
from the national armies — pits of torture, 
where a deliberate, systematic, long protracted 
process of freezing, infection and starvation 
was coolly and unrelentingly carried forward 
upon tens of thousands of men taken in open 
battle, and carried forward in connection with 
circumstances of brutality whose horror is be- 
yond expression, and which the ear of decency 
refuses to hear. Our posterity will turn pale 
as they read that record. Mankind will exe- 
crate the story with everlasting curses, and 
confess that this alone were enou2:h to consi":n 
the exploded slave-holders' rebellion to the 
blackest abyss of human iufiimy. 

Now it should seem strange, if it were not 
found, (though the evidence which has trans- 
pired .ill points ill the opposite direction,) nev- 



15 

ertheless, it were strange, that some of the 
cooler heads among the insurgent authorities 
should not have foreseen the reactionary effect 
which a knowledge of these barbarities must 
of necessity work to the prejudice of their 
cause, and, however careless as to the atroci- 
ties in themselves, should not have felt com- 
pelled to put a stop to this disgraceful and 
self-damaging course. But the important fact 
is that these atrocities have -not been stop- 
ped, in any direction, from the beginning un- 
til now. On the contrary, history will be 
compelled to declare, that this rebellion, from 
the first, has clothed itself with every possi- 
ble atrocity as with a garment. There is 
nothing whatever that its partisans have scru- 
pled to do. Unexampled perjuries, deceit 
and theft, the most dreadful and extensive 
persecution of neighbors and fellow citizens, 
piracies of the most outrageous character, 
wholesale poisoning, mining of prisoners' quar- 
ters, ready for the match, in case they were 
likely to be retaken, massacres, tortures, 
starvation of tens of thousands of prisoners 
of war, the destruction of railway trains, the 
conflagration of great cities full of peaceful 



ii; 

inhabitants by the niglitly t(jrch of the in- 
cendiary, and iinally, oh lieavens ! the con- 
certed butchery of tlie President of the Uni- 
ted States, by a too long tolerated play- 
actor ! 

The evidence which is daily transpiring 
points, as we have said, with increasing cer. 
tainty to the conclusion, (hard as it is to credit 
both the stupidity of the mistake and the 
•brutality of the guilt,) that the head and re- 
presentative and for a time essentially the 
dictator over the whole insurrectionary move- 
ment — the eternally infamous Davis — that 
he and his coadjutors could, in a great de- 
gree, at least, have checked and prevented 
this career of inhuman proceedings, but did 
not ; because their better judgment was 
clouded by crime, and even their desire for 
the surest success, overpowered by a terrible 
thirst for revenge — a result which might 
naturally enough be expected from that spirit 
of hate and destruction to which they sur- 
rendered their souls, when they entered the 
conspiracy to break u}) and destroy this gen- 
tlest of governments and happiest of nations 
on earth. This view, it must be confessed, 



17 

is corroborated, also, by the reflection that 
the incredible starvation horrors at the Libby 
Prison in Richmond, especially, to say noth- 
ing of the corresponding horrors at Belle 
Isle, at Salisbury, N. C, at Danville, Va., at 
Andersonville and elsewhere, must have been 
dependent on the will of the President, as 
commander-in-chief of the rebel forces. He 
must have known perfectly the facts. 
Whether the cruelties were first begun by 
his order, or not, he could, it seems cer- 
tain, have spoken a word, or given a stroke 
of his pen, which would have sent relief 
and life to these dying men. But this he 
did not do. That word he did not speak. 
Their cruel and unnecessary deaths, therefore, 
it is scarcely possible to deny, cry out of 
the ground by thousands, and call him their 
relentless murderer. 

But there is another possible explanation of 
the strength and steadiness of that unbroken 
current of brutalities and fiendish deeds. We 
are able to suppose, that, the rebellion once 
under way, the leaders were practically un- 
able altogether to control its lawless spirit, and 
restrain its hideous excesses. It is not im- 



IS 

probaljle, perhaps — though we must confess 
tliat there is not a morsel of evidence to sus- 
tain the supposition — yet it is conceivable, at 
least, that the rebelling leaders, from motives 
of far-sighted policy, however malignant their 
passions might be, never advised to these cru- 
elties and brutalities, but counseled to the 
opposite course, and resisted, even, the actual 
perpetration. We say it is conceivable that it 
may have been so ; and if this be the true 
alternative ; if the spirit of rebellion has devel- 
oped a fury and madness which its leaders 
could not restrain ; if it has seized the bits in 
its teeth, and run unmanageable into out- 
rageous inhumanities from which its instigators 
may well endeavor to extricate themselves 
with repudiation and shame and alarm; if it 
be so; if this, rather than the other, be the 
true explanation of these atrocities ; yet in 
what respect is the situation alleviated, whether 
as to the more than murderous guilt of the 
instigating leaders, or as to the terrible char- 
acter of the now developed and maddened 
spirit of misrule and destruction? Oh, how 
irreparable and eternal, is the mischief, and 
liuw uiipardnnal)le is the thousandfold murder- 



19 

ous guilt of those desperate men who have 
persistently roused, and lashed into an ungov- 
ernable fury, this demoniac temper which in 
the fruitless support of an abominable cause 
has deluged a happy continent with human 
blood, and gloated over thousands of the most 
blissful homes on earth covered with blight, 
desolation and woe ! Oh, there are crimes so 
big and so dreadful^ as almost to paralyze our 
sense of right and wrong, and we stand in a 
kiuc\ of uncertainty and bewilderment before 
their tremendous guilt ! Fellow citizens, it is 
madness to talk of pardon and amnesty for 
such men. In a civil sense they have com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin, for which there 
can be no forgiveness. The history of the 
world has invariably shown that a weak pity for 
the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. The 
only possible stability for our Government, and 
safety for our children, depends on the irre- 
vocable doom of these men, who stand before 
heaven and earth the murderers at once of 
ourselves and our liberties. 

But this disposal of the leaders in treason, 
painful and difficult as it may be, is not the 
most painful, nor the most difficult aspect of our 



20 

situation. It is comparatively easy, (though I 
confess to much misgiving, lest the government 
aiul the nation shall prove morbidly and dan- 
gerously merciful in this quarter, even,) yet it 
is comparatively easy to deal with a few con- 
spicuous traitors ; but we shall be terribly de- 
ceived if we imagine that this will either remove 
or paralyze the dreadful and now maddened 
spirit of ..rebellion, revenge, and ruin. We hear 
dangerous syrens in one quarter and another 
singing delusive strains of pity and paydon. 
" The spirit of vengeance " against us, we hear 
it said in some high conservative quarters, " the 
spirit of vengeance is now quelled. The war is 
• over. The day has gone by for anger, severity 
and alarm." No avSsertion could be more untrue. 
None could be more perilous for us to accept 
in such a time as this. We do not speak of 
the almost indifferent masses. They did not 
excite the war. But there are hearts, by hun- 
dreds, and I know not but by thousands, 
in which the spirit of vengeance is not quelled, 
and never will be, while they breathe in earthly 
air. Consider, we pray you, how astonish- 
ingly, beyond all we were able to believe 
possible, the spirit of treason and blood grew 



21 

strong and spread, by the fostering care of 
its early fomenters, even under the peaceful 
skies of our former visible unity and fraternity. 
How rank and widely extended, then, must 
have become its growth, under the congenial 
tempests and malignity of these four years of 
visible separation and exasperating war ? Its 
purposes are now defeated, but its disposition 
is unchanged, except as it is now the more 
frenzied by chagrin and despair. It is but a 
specimen of this sublimated venom which, be 
it remembered, since the hopeless collapse of 
their cause, and when the door of peace was 
already opening, has filled our land with 
blacker mourning, than the united slaughters 
of the whole war. From this horrible speci- 
men Providence is callino; us to learn of the 
spirit which is yet to be dealt with. 

How long this state of things is to continue 

— how long this temper of murderous treason 
is to remain, suppressed, indeed, but not dead 

— how long it is to exist, scattered and con- 
cealed, but alive and rankling in embittered 
and desperate bosoms, or perhaps fostered and 
deliberative in the darkness of secret organi- 
zations — this is the first and foremost of the 



22 

great questions on which our national destiny- 
is now hinged ; and the tremendous interests 
which it involves are equalled only by the 
tremendous uncertainty that hangs over it, and 
utterly baffles every attempt to predict, or 
calculate its future developments. To await 
these developments would be to await per- 
dition. The contingency to be instantly met, 
with all its uncertainties, is already upon us. 
Its uncertainties constitute a great part of its 
peril, as well as its demand for immediate, 
effectual and decisive remedies. 

In times like these it must be wise, then, 
for us and our rulers to recall, and to be will- 
ing to take for the guidance of our conduct, 
principles of safety which have been so often 
demonstrated, at the cost of seas of human 
blood on other continents and in former gen- 
erations. We cannot afford, in days like these, 
to throw history and experience aside, in 
order to make trial of humanitarian theories 
and crude speculations. The exigency calls 
for well-aimed and rapid strokes, such as the 
experience of the world has proved to be 
efficacious and sure. 

Among the principles which have been 



23 

settled by the bloody experiments of all the 
ages, and stand written in blood-red letters 
along all the pages of the past, one of the 
first is, that treason, the crimen majestatis^ is 
not only in its own character the supremest 
pitch of human guilt, but also always contains, 
potentially, in its black bosom, all possible 
crimes; and, by the common consent of the 
civilized world, whoever enters into a treason- 
able conspiracy, openly takes his life in his 
hand, and voluntarily sets up in the sight of 
all mankind, as the stake of his success in 
quenching the life of his government, his own 
death, poverty and infamy. Another of the 
principles which belong to this same category 
is, that the stability of human government 
indispensably re.quires a conviction pervading 
the minds of all its subjects, of the certainty 
that law will be executed, penal justice in- 
flicted, legal equity maintained, in spite of 
opposition and combinations, no matter how 
formidable, and at the cost, even, if necessary, 
of the happiness,' the reputation, the property, 
the life of individuals, no matter how nu- 
merous, no matter of what station. It is also 
one of the stern facts which have been estab- 



24 

lislicd l)y experience, that the spirit of murder 
cannot be cured by caresses. It lias most 
commonly l)een the gentlest of governmehts, 
and the most generous of rulers, that have 
fallen by treason and murder. Republics, in 
comparison with monarchies, have ever been 
notoriously insecure, and, for the most part, 
have been finally destroyed by traitors from 
within. So, as a rule, has it been of gentle, 
unsuspicious, large-hearted rulers in dangerous 
times. It was not Ilerod, dripping with the 
blood of the innocents, but Julius Caesar, the 
most generous of men, who fell at the foot of 
Pompey's statue, by the daggers of pardoned 
conspii'ators. It was not the infamous Catha- 
rine de Medicis, of France, the patroness of 
profligates and assassins, the instigator of the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew, but it was the 
lovely, peerless Henry IV., the mildest, wisest, 
most paternal prince France ever saw, who fell 
by Ravaillac's knife, in the streets of Paris, and 
covered France with unexampled mourning. 
It was not Philip II. of Spain, the meanest, 
crudest, darkest spirit that ever occupied a 
throne, ])ut it was William of Orange, the 
brave, devoted, glorious deliverer of Holland, 



25 

the idol of his people, who was shot, at the 
door of his dining-room at Delft, by a hired 
assassin of Philip. It was not the arch-traitor 
Davis, hated and cursed as he was by his out- 
lawed coadjutors, and yet likely to get away 
with his life, but it was the gentle, forbearing, 
forgiving, the incomparably loved and honored 
President Lincoln, who received the assassin's 
ball, and whose untimely and cruel death has 
filled every loyal heart in the land with unut- 
terable sorrow. 

These principles, which ought to be worth 
to us, whatever our lives and fortunes and 
liberties are worth, are familiar and easily 
apprehended; and the inferences which of 
necessity follow are certain and terrible. 
These principles, we say, and the stern and 
terrible inferences which they carry, ^have 
just been written, anew, over the heads of 
this nation, as it were, in letters of fire and 
blood on a midnight sky. Nevertheless we 
have not recalled these things with a view to 
dictate, nor with the desire that you, or that 
our fellow citizens at large, should dictate in 
their hearts, even, much less should clamor- 
ously prescribe to our rulers and tribunals 

4 



26 

wliat kirifl, or what measure, of punishment 
sIkiU be meted out to the various partici- 
pants and abettors of this fearful l)ut now 
smitten and dying rebellion — who shall die, 
who shall be exiled, who disfranchised and 
leit at home, who, from various reasons of 
public expediency, pardoned and restored. 
No good, as it appears to us, is to be hoped 
for, Ijut great damage is to be apprehended, 
from such discussion. In the case of an 
ordinary, everyday crime, it is by common 
consent admitted to be unwise and improper 
to discuss the measure of punishment, before 
the constituted authorities have sifted both 
facts and expediences, and passed the lawful 
decision. Much more must it be so in a case 
like the present, of such transcendent magni- 
tude, and of such an unexampled character. 
Opinions will be sure to differ in respect to 
details ; partisanship is easiest kindled and 
passions blaze most furiously over such perso- 
nal material, and dissension cannot foil to re- 
tard and render more uncertain that stroke of 
justice which all desire to see fall, in some 
foi-in, upon the guilty ; wliilo, too, the most 
essential thing, and perhaps the only thing 



27 

really vital to the republic is, that the stroke 
of retribution should be at once sure and 
speedy. 

But, unquestionably, as the whole class of 
facts to which we have just alluded, and 
above all the terrible ftict which has broucrht 
us to this discussion to-night, distinctly indicate, 
the danger icMcIi cliiefly threatens us lies 7iot 
in the direction of severity, hut in that of 
leniency — we are in no danger whatever of 
being too severe, but we are in great danger of 
an easy indifference. Severity was never a 
popular virtue, because its face looks unlovely, 
at first sight, and, especially, to a crowd, and 
also because its exercise requires of most men 
an effort and a self-sacrifice which the majori- 
ties, unless stimulated by some great excite- 
ment, like that with which God is now stimu- 
lating us, are seldom or never ready to 
undertake. Unquestionably, a few weeks ago, 
when the last great support of the rebellion 
gave way to our arms, and the speedy end .of 
all armed resistance to the government flashed 
upon our view, then, our very success was 
operating to overset our safety. The joy of 
final victory, the inexpressible sense of relief 



28 

in every mind, and the exuberance of onr 
rose-colored hopes, unfortunately, but not un- 
naturally, went at once to melt down the 
sternness of the popular heart, and efface the 
just sense of wrong and danger which were 
still indispensable to key the national nerve 
up to the thorough work of annihilating the 
last fragment of treason. 

But if, after the new and terrible light 
which this fearful Providence has thrown upon 
tlie spirit and purposes of treason among us — 
if, after this wholesome alarm, which has 
touched the minds of millions who would not 
otherwise have seen, or believed, the great 
and insiduous perils by which we are still en- 
compassed — if, after all, we now fail to put 
the stern and necessary and finishing hand to 
the tottering and skulking remnants of this 
rebellion, smiting with every most effective 
blow, till the last fibre of its existence is an- 
nihilated, beyond resuscitation and beyond 
resurrection — then what will be the judgment 
of history upon us, and who will pity our 
miseries, or, should we bo utterly devoured by 
endless treason, who would drop a tear on 



29 

the page that shoukl record our national ex-* 
tinction ? 

But, thanks to the Idnd efficiency of 
God's bitter strokes, this will not be. Our 
last lesson has been enough. The American 
people is ready, now, to sustain, with unflinch- 
ing determination, the execution of law and 
justice and expediency, both upon the shat- 
tered carcass, and upon every existing limb, 
of this hideous treason ; and no matter how 
terrible and how extensive the application of 
punishment may be, they are ready to make 
the welkin ring with their contented and 
hearty Amen ! 

The American Government has passed, and 
emerged in safety, from the crucial test of its 
lawful authority and its power to maintain it. 
It is settled, whether the United States be a 
nation, living an indivisible unity of life, or 
whether it be a loose and lifeless conirlomer- 
ation of thirty -six supreme sovereignties. That 
troublesome folly is no longer debatable, 
whether the will of a State, or of any co- 
alition of States, can effectually defy the au- 
thority of the American people, as embodied 
in the General Government. These heresies 



have found their end. Tliey have been ground 
to powder in the shocks of battle, and tram- 
pled into the dust of the Southern planta- 
tions under the terrible marches of the na- 
tional armies. 

Above all, that cause of causes — that force 
behind all other forces — that germinating 
power and foster-father of the States^ rights 
heresy — that heaven -assaulting system of sin 
— legalized slavery — has been throttled in the 
exigencies of war, and its very carcass, in 
the smoke of battle, has disappeared. This 
was a way of deliverance, and advancement, 
which we knew not, and four years ago were 
too blind to see, but by which God (glory 
to His name) has astonishingly brought us. 

The immediate instrument by whom we 
have been thus led — blindly indeed and 
through terrible alarms, yet safely and glo- 
riously led — has been, 1 need not say, the 
departed, lamented, venerated President, whose 
precious dust, the nation, sobbing in the 
agony of bereavement, have just followed witli 
benedictions to the place which shall give it 
an ]i(*nurL'd rest, till the morning of the 
resurrection. He has not only deserved to 



31 

be, but he has been, the most fortunate of 
men. Well might the most illustrious of em- 
perors envy his fame. His history is sublime. 
His glory is peerless. 

There is but one measure of greatness and 
glory which the American people will ever 
tolerate to be used, in attempting to esti- 
mate the grandeur of his excellence, and the 
brightness of his name. Upon a monumental 
column, at the northeast corner of Trafalgar 
Square, in London, stands, in marble, the 
immortal Nelson, evermore attracting the gaze 
of the multitudes which are surging along at 
his feet, and reminding them of patriotism, 
valor and glory. The opposite, northwest 
corner has a similar pedestal column, but its 
empty top has been for fifty years awaiting 
the coming hero who should be found wor- 
thy to stand in marble beside the glorious 
Admiral, and divide with him the silent in- 
struction of the surging, admiring throng. 
Mount Vernon, in the south of our land, planted 
on the bosom of slavery and chivalry, has 
hitherto held the form of the one great glory 
of our nation, whither pilgrims trod to admire 
the character of Washington, and receive new 



32 

inspirations of liberty ;ind patriotism, at liis 
tomb. The prairie of the north, in ;in atmos- 
phere of ])urer freedom and sterner toil, has 
been standinjL,'-, an empty pedestal, in the sight 
of heaven, though we knew it not, awaiting 
through these sixty-five years, the tomb of the 
coming hero who slioiild be worthy to divide 
with the Father of his country the applause 
and the inspiration of posterity. The path of 
patriot pilgrims will henceforth branch alike 
northward and southward to the resting place 
equally of the Founder of American Liberty, 
and of the Destroyer of American Treason and 
Traitorous Slavery. The two niches of glory 
arc now full. Let us accustom our eyes to the 
glittering letters of immortality, and our ears 
to the golden sound which our children's 
children will chant, together, to the latest 
generation — WASHINGTON and LINCOLN! 
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN ! ! 

The few great names grow greater and 
more glorious, as years go by. They require 
the perspective of ages, to allow us to make a 
true measurement of their vastness; and it is 
only the calm atmosphere of written history, 
and the incrcjising light of developing truth. 



33 

which is able to bring out, and will continue 
more and more to bring out, in the apprehen- 
sion of mankind, their real splendor. So it 
has been with WASHINGTON, the first of 
our golden names, so it will be with LIN- 
COLN, our second. 

There are reasons which will render this law 
of human glory more sure in the second case, 
than it has been in the first. WASHINGTON 
was a military chief — a position which always 
affords the best opportunity for building up a 
rapid fame of the most showy and captivat- 
ing kind. He was gilded, at once, with the 
whole military glory of his country's successful 
arms. The just departed LINCOLN, though offi- 
cially and truly commander-in-chief of the armies 
and navies of the nation, controlling with mar- 
velous firmness, sagacity and singleness of pur- 
pose, the whole complicated machinery of this 
tremendous war, and having finally organized 
and achieved for the nation a general and 
conclusive victory, (so far as any human chief 
can, reverently, be said to have organized a 
victory, in affairs so immense and complicated 
beyond any sure calculations of man,) yet 
wore no other uniform but the dress of an 



34 

American citizen, he rode at the head of no 
armies, he remained in the shade of his oflll- 
cial closet, he was al)Sorbed in thought and 
prayer, he was toiling in silence at the heavy 
cares of civil policy, and he was listening 
to the plea of the distressed. The imme- 
diate applause of successful arms he gladly 
left for his faithful and illustrious lieutenants 
in the field, who richly deserve their fame ; 
while, nevertheless, many a specific and un- 
expected blow which fell with crushing weight 
upon the bleeding head of the rebellion was 
contrived and matured in his own original and 
sagacious brain. 

Then again, WASHINGTON was not called 
to encounter a breath of poUHcdl pr^udice, in 
his opening career, but rode at once to his 
illustrious station, on a whirlwind of popular 
choice, esteem and expectation. The just de- 
parted LINCOLN fell upon far different times, 
and encountered a far dillbrent beginning. He 
was sharply opposed. He was extensively and 
outrageously defamed. Even by his friends, he 
was then but partially known, and relied on 
willi many painful misgivings and fears, which 
gave way but slowly at first, though they disap- 



60 



peared more and more rapidly, as the splen- 
dor of his integrity and the richness of his 
affections and the clearness of his insig-ht and 
the invincibility of his purpose and his flam- 
ing patriotism, began to form that wonderful 
halo of glory which shone so brightly, at last, 
around his venerated head. 

Another thing — which fixes a stronger im- 
pression upon contemporaries than on poster- 
ity, and the essential splendor of which stead- 
ily vanishes as ages go by — the family of 
WASHINGTON was old, dignified and wealthy; 
and these factitious advantages, never to be 
despised in gilding a contemporary renown, 
possessed, unquestionably, a greater influence 
upon the men of his times, than they would 
exert among us to-day. The just departed 
LINCOLN has gathered no temporary dignity 
from this quarter, and while, therefore, the 
brightness of his name will never fade in the 
least by the depreciation of such honor, on 
the contrary, even the romantic enchantment 
that gathers about the name of Cincinnatus, 
taken from the plough-field to the command 
and the salvation of the Roman state, will 
weave its peculiar and increasing witchery 



36 

of glory, around the strange, homely origin of 
"the people's President." 

Finally, WASHINGTON lived for his coun- 
try, and died as a great and good man would 
wish to die, who had no more sacritices to 
make for his fellow men. The life of the just 
departed LINCOLN, after having wrought out 
the painful salvation of the Republic, has been 
offered, a bloody sacrifice, upon the altar of 
human freedom and the happiness of his 
fellow countrymen. He has taken the last de- 
gree of glory, and set above his undying 
name the martyr's crown. The best who shall 
arise among us, in the future, may imitate, but 
none can surpass him. Further than his, hu- 
man effort and human glory cannot go. 

" Shroud the banner ! rear the cross ! 
Consecrate a nation's loss! 
Lay the gentle son of Toil ! 
Proudly in his native soil ; 
Crowned with honor to his rest, 
Bear the Prophet of tlio West! " 



